The shortest and quickest path to a problem's solution
is self-management, not waiting for someone else.

Cost Effectiveness

From a business standpoint, encouraging and rewarding self-management is
very cost effective. AESOP's self-managing shareholder works to maximize
personal profits and monthly share ownership. The average time between
encountering and serving a customer's need or problem decreases for the following
reasons.

A. The employee will pause and think about a job before quitting and asking
for help.

B. If a general understanding exists, the worker will try to write-up the
project to receive the maximum project management profit, taking it as far
as possible before asking for help.

C. If he asks for help, he is very attentive, for a learning fee is charged
for assistance in completing a job or organizing a project. He will seek
a sufficient authority to assist him at the lowest training price. A baffled
worker will not approach a crony who knows nothing, nor will the frustrated
employee immediately solicit the advice of the chief decision-maker who knows
most, but also charges the highest rate for educational assistance. In this
small way, Aesop promotes the free market system in which the buyer (the
employee needing help) seeks the best product (senior staff) for his buying
dollar (learning debit transfer).

D. While the more highly trained superior serves the customer, the employee
will be more attentive to the service. Failure to learn quickly and fully
will require future educational assistance. The employee probably will review
his daily performance log to recognize where he has paid for the most training.
Increasingly, and on his own, he will review the self-pacing instructional
guides after hours because he sees the personal economic benefits.

When refined with objective, standardized evaluation and rewards, self-management
leads to faster, better service. A company that promotes self-management
will out-perform companies that do not.

Individual Limits

Self-management is not without potential criticism. Conventional wisdom says
most individuals cannot be managers, and it holds true in most companies.
Managers, as a whole, are underpaid for the problem-solving drudgery assigned
to them. Difficulties include undertrained, undermotivated employees who
are told not to think. Problems in poorly managed businesses are redundant
without permanent resolution.

Universal requirement of self-management with compensation, however, eliminates
imbalanced earnings and repetitious problems. As self-management increases
within an organization, the difficulties associated with being a manager
decrease until the traditional manager can vanish. Anyone can manage more
if he has Aesop to help him.

Means of Self-Management

As self-management is implemented, the administrative overhead and the emotional
toll on managers decreases. The motivated, skilled individual with traditional
management potential will coordinate more activity and individuals. In an
AESOP operation the need to re-train, re-motivate, re-evaluate and clean
up after subordinates quickly falls far below levels in comparable operations.

Aesop relies on two main computer programs: Self-Manager and Auto-Manager.
These programs run on a local area network in which separate microcomputers
are linked to a central server. The central file server runs the Auto-Manager,
and the connected terminal nodes run the Self-Manager. From day one of
employment, the new employee is exposed to the system and assigned management
duties. The number one responsibility of all employees is learning, using,
critiquing and improving the managing without managers system.

The Self-Manager extends the managerial capacity of the individual by assisting
and guiding learning. Good workers perform better, liberating the traditional
manager for strategic decisions on growth and market share for greater
profit-making. Bad workers change or go. When a person's time on the job
is quantified to its productive worth, bad workers consistently have a red
bottom line. Workers who cannot achieve the results they claimed when hired
are subject to demotion or discharge. AESOP does not ask a person to do more
than that which he said he could do.

The Auto-Manager monitors the immediate business environment, performing
quality and efficiency assurance. The Auto-Manag er operates on a job-by-job
basis and on schedule time cycles (minute, hour, day, week, quarters, and
annual). It delegates needed decisions or tasks to trained individuals. Among
the tasks automatically managed are accounts receivables, accounts payables,
payroll, tax forms, office duties and job assignments. The Auto-Manager
coordinates the interaction of the business with other businesses in the
AESOP system via a wide area network applications.

AESOP's emphasis on self-management does not mean a quagmire of confusion
and tedium. Aesop reduces the need for tedious self-management. Computerization
allows any piece of information on the business, employee, customer or job
to be accessed in only 3-5 keystrokes. This information includes pricing,
techniques, policies, procedures, receivables and payables.

The primary means of self-management is the adherence to a meritocracy, that
is, individual capitalism and daily democracy. When people know they will
be mentally and materially rewarded for doing their best they will perform
better. The essence of self-management is not only a computer program.
Standardized policies and procedures of performance with objective, quantified
compensation are more important than computers or computer programs.
Computerized, these infrastructures of self-management implement the benefits
more quickly and efficiently than can be done by manual human effort.

Goodbye Bad Worker

Workers vary in goodness and badness, rightness and wrongness in their attitude
to learn, work and perform. These variations have nothing to do with ability.
Knowing the difference between the attitudinal extremes is important to the
survival of a company. Aesop quickly quantifies and documents poor performance.
If discharge is needed, the supervisor can review an auditable trail of
communication on poor performance to substantiate the employment termination.
The objective, factual nature of communication prevents many everyday occurrences
that can cause good workers to go bad.

Constitutionally Bad

Some people simply are bad workers. Within a value system predicated on maturing
in problem-solving abilities, bad workers suffer from never being required
to be responsible. As a result, they never learn to handle problems.

Self-management, if not a natural talent, should be taught and required.
Besides being a logical, survival necessity for parents and teachers,
problem-solving training is more humane to a growing individual. To deny
a person the mental tools to control his fate is to imprison him.

Not learning to be responsible and self-managing relegates one to second-class
humanity or less. The resentful learner is doomed to suffer problems repeatedly
and condemned to never know the joy of new and greater achievement.
Unfortunately, once accustomed to living without solving problems, bad workers
expect the "something for nothing" situation to continue.

If a capable person abdicates responsible management of his time and problems
then he should not get more than he is worth. At AESOP, if a person performs
below a profitable level, he will be discharged, or his wages will be reduced
to allow profits for his retirement, education and benefits. If all companies
quickly discharged bad workers, these workers would eventually acquire the
work ethic. Aesop confronts the poor/bad worker with the objective worth
of his motivation.

Systemically Bad

Locks help keep honest people honest ... and good management policies help
keep good workers productive. Employment systems often wear down good workers
who become merely bodies drawing paychecks. Aesop creates a better system
with policies and rewards that make good workers better. The objective and
unemotional nature of Aesop reduces much of the hostility that can develop
in the work place. Profit awareness and sharing makes the rewards clear and
clean.

By requiring self-management from all workers, the good worker avoids carrying
others' burdensome workload. By assisting in the decision-making process
with promptings and finger-tip information, the frustration of making mistakes
and of not having adequate information is reduced. One can't groan "I forgot
to remember", for the computer program double checks crucial decisions. The
ease of "one-key does it all" allows complete billing and bookkeeping without
the hassle of manual log sheets. This savings in tedium translates into a
higher threshold for handling and solving customers' needs.

Procrastination, an indication of poor self-management, delays action that
needs to be completed sooner. A reason for delay is the lack of clarity in
direction or a general malaise in spirit. Aesop, with its project scheduling
and organization, reduces these two causes of delay. In addition, if one
cannot do a job when needed, the standardization allows quick and easy
re-delegation of the task to another person.

By quantifying performance in an objective, matter-of-fact manner, heated
subjective judgment of performance disappears. The responsible individual
bears the cost of mistakes. A colleague or boss is less likely to "blow-up"
because the lost money is not deducted from the company.

When a superior can objectively comment that "Well, that's a ten dollar mistake
that will come out of your profits" the subjective emotional element withers.
Why, when assessing a subordinate's error, be negative and personal? More
often than not when something goes wrong a boss only has angry criticism
as a vent for his frustration. When the wrong-doing is quantified with money
out of the employee's pocket and when the boss can bill the employee for
the training time then personal criticism will decline. When people see the
dollar cost of their mistakes, their attitude and performance improves.

There are benefits to objectively treating problems as hidden opportunities.
Within a healthier mental atmosphere toward problems, employees more quickly
detect and define mistakes. People seek assistance, both after and before
a problem, rather than try to hide the error. Most Aesop project modules
for write up and scheduling contain "peer preview" and "peer postview" jobs
to encourage and require consideration of potential problems by a colleague.
This built-in "Let's look for problems before the customer can find them"
develops a professional receptivity to co-worker feedback as being constructive
rather than destructive.

Aesop recognizes that a person's ability to handle more complex problems
cannot be achieved without successful resolution of lesser problems. These
learning mistakes are to be expected and borne by the responsible party to
prevent the mistakes from becoming repeat mistakes. The feedback is objective
and real-time. Most evaluation is subjective and yearly during a performance
review for increased wages. Ironically, the person who makes the most mistakes
should be the highest paid person ... if he is not making repeat mistakes.
The person who makes the most learning mistakes is the person who has
consolidated his knowledge and performance well enough to blaze new trails
of revenue from which he should receive a fair share.

Aesop's profit profile shows where a person can increase his profits in new
discretionary areas. This gives a shareholder more control in organizing
his day. An AESOP employee should not have more than 50% of his time scheduled
in job production. Each normal day has a 20% discretionary time allotment
that can be rescheduled if unexpected production demands require emergency
assistance. This flextime reduces the instances in which the employee feels
there is not enough time to serve the customer well. Because AESOP's employees
are progressively cross-trained, Aesop does not suffer "stand around losses"
like companies or unions in which people alternate between being overworked
and standing around.

When things are slow, the employee is aware that his profit profile is being
eroded. All too often in the service business an employee will not seek something
to do when things slow down. After all, it is the boss's responsibility to
find things for employees to do. By putting the onus on the employee to be
aggressive, the manager is freed up. Areas in which the employee can be more
efficient during slow periods of customer demand are customer telemarketing,
personal training, service development and office duties.

Customers like the non-chaotic nature of Aesop. The professional conduct
of the staff impresses the customer. Thus, when a disagreement or lack of
communication occurs--an opportunity in disguise--the AESOP professional
often has the benefit of the doubt because of the professional atmosphere.
In addition, another staff member is available to diffuse and redefine the
situation to the benefit of all parties. This professional environment reduces
the bad days at the office and makes AESOP a better work place.

Self-management improves workers' performance and satisfaction. The discussed
reasons of improvement emphasize a primary principle of employment at AESOP:
People are hired first and foremost to think and manage. The number one
responsibility at AESOP is to be a self-manager assisted by software. The
actual technical production of work comes after first thinking how best to
manage the work. This company policy creates a healthier mental and emotional
environment for those who are willing to stop and think.

Goodbye Bad Manager

Some managers are inadequate for personal reasons, e.g., the unintelligent
and unmotivated nephew of the owner.
Nepotism is harmful to everyone
on the job. Nepotism (which is Latin for nephew and means "not potent") describes
how a relative is placed in a position of responsibility without the power
or ability to solve the problem.

The nepotic manager is in over his head and suffers from doing a poor job,
being unrespected and denied growth. A person cannot grow to his potential
if he is in a position of excessive responsibility without the prerequisite
skills or without the required power. Workers suffer from an incapable superior
or co-worker. They have to solve more than their fair share of problems or
suffer problematic working conditions. The boss suffers reduced productivity
from powerless relatives and disenchanted employees.

Nepotism takes many forms including cronyism. An insecure boss could use
nepotism or cronyism to destroy the spirit of a potential rival. If you overpay
a person and deny him opportunities for growth, he will never become a powerful
problem-solver in his own right. The pay distracts him from honing his skills,
and the eunuch employment neuters his potential.

Position and pay are not the basis of one being a great problem solver. A
maxim in the workplace is that paying a bad employee more money will not
improve their performance. Becasue pay is tied to actual accomplishment at
Aesop, personal and professional power comes from solving problems of greater
complexity.

Other managers are deficient because of the systems in which they work. Aesop's
objective standardization of performance and promotion eliminates incompetent
managers and prevents good managers from becoming bad managers.

Around the Clock Nano-Second Managers

All too often, traditional management depends on one crucial person. When
that person is no longer present (after 5 pm, on weekends, after promotions
or terminations), the problem-solving capacity of the business decreases
precipitously. Aesop is like having 24-hour managers everyday who never tire,
burn out or take vacations. When the best problem-solver leaves, the system
keeps the problem-solving process humming with scarcely any decrease in
performance. With telecommunication, the needed assistance is only a few
keystrokes away.

The Auto-Manager portion of Aesop checks activities and schedules on a
minute-by-minute basis. This prevents tasks from falling behind and more
work from being accepted than can be completed. Aesop is the true one-minute
manager.

Systemically Bad

Many managers are handicapped because of the management system in which they
are trapped. Their responsibilities are ill-defined. Many have a catch-all
requirement to do anything that is not done by subordinates. Burnout occurs:
many good managers become overworked and useless as problem-solvers.

Aesop will allow an individual to manage better. Management training is
automatic, progressive and relevant. Tasks are not delegated to inexperienced
workers. Support services include computer databases and co-worker knowledge.
They reduce instances of bad management where the individual is overworked
without support.

The Peter Principle states that people are promoted to their level of
incompetence. Aesop will allow a person to try more difficult tasks. An employee
cannot remain in an unprofitable action. The real time profit awareness will
initiate a self-demotion to a more profitable level of responsibility. When
individuals overextend themselves, they suffer debits on profits and earnings
and they re-set their level of competence. This self-assignment of tasks
is based on self-awareness. It eliminates the managerial drudgery of counseling
and demoting an individual who cannot handle a new position of responsibility.

Aesop requires and rewards self-management to bring out the best in workers
and managers. The system effectively quality controls management.

Critics of Self-Management

With Aesop, the good get better and the bad move out. Is it a Big Brother
process as described in George Orwell's dramatic book, 1984? No. It provides
a needed human service in a real time mode: objective, standardized assessment
of human performance and worth. The bad workers are immediately confronted
with their shortcomings, while the good receive material rewards and mental
reinforcement that motivate them to perform better.

Who will dislike requiring and rewarding self-management? Those who are overpaid
relative to the problems they solve in life. These people are short-sighted,
for the problems they are not solving exact a human toll upon their lifestyles.
If all people were paid what they are worth on the scale of human problems,
the world would be a better place.

Aesop can help politically sponsored programs that lack or reject
self-management. Throughout history, politicians have promised voters something
for nothing, that is, "Elect me and I will manage and solve your problems
for you." Self-deluding voters buy this line. One person cannot know and
solve the problems of the many as politicians are quick to claim. Offering
this bait for votes, politicians sell their influence to solve problems to
generate economic privileges that benefit only a few.

Democracy in ancient Greece was plagued with demagogues: "leaders who make
use of popular prejudices and false claims and promises in order to gain
power." Democracy, then and now, declines in quality and popularity when
"divide people to rule" becomes merely "divide people to elect."

Society pays a high price if people abdicate management of personal problems
to politicians, political vote-buying programs, or politically appointed
bureaucrats. Problems will not be solved or will be solved at a higher cost
in the main commodity--time. The most expensive things in life are those
which are supposed to be free; this includes politicians promising solutions
to problems that people should be self-managing. The boondoggles of social
security, education and child-care are the results of political promises.
Political promises are empty promises.

Because people were not required to self-manage their savings for retirement,
Social Security was created, an expensive political boondoggle destroying
the future retirement of today's worker. Similarly, politicians fail to require
parents to manage their procreated children.

When you resort to paying someone else to manage and solve personal problems,
the final cost rises in the only commodity that you really have: your time.
Better to take an hour to solve a personal problem than work ten hours paying
taxes to maintain an on-going problem. Better to lower one's standard of
living during the child raising years than to later lower the lifestyle of
parent and child.

America needs politicians who champion and require self-management as the
key to American revival. America needs a Constitutional interpretation that
a "right" is also a requirement to pursue freedom from problems. As is, rights
mean politically taxing another citizen to pay for one's failure at
self-management. Aesop will show the cost-effectiveness of self-management
for others to follow. AESOP could increasingly negate politically motivated
programs by offering private counterparts at a better price, e.g., education
and security.

America needs politicians who will help organize Americans to solve their
own problems. America does not need politicians who tax Americans to hire
campaign workers with experience solely in solving election problems.
Minimum-wage laws are a tax on self-managers, passed by politicians who will
not tell irresponsible workers: "You want a better paying job? Do a better
job and earn a better education."

The shortest and quickest path to a problem's solution is self-management,
not waiting for someone else. A computerized system that requires, assists
and rewards self-management leads to fewer private and public problems.

Warning: Anyone found
stealing lifehours will be forever banned from participation in and rewards
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